One of the problems Iraq and Syria will face as Islamic State is gradually rolled back from its territorial acquisitions is that it will demobilize its conventional forces and return to being a terrorist organization.

In principle, the idea of streamlining the Iraqi government and making it more efficient is a capital one. But the reforms being pursued by Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi have to raise some questions about the direction the country is taking.

The pan-Arab London daily al-Sharq al-Awsat [The Middle East] is reporting from a source inside the new Iraqi government that former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, now one of three largely symbolic vice presidents, is attempting to undermine his successor, Haider al-Abadi.

The breakdown in Iraq means that “the Middle East map—defined by European powers a century ago—may be redrawn, either de facto or formally,” regional expert Robin Wright writes at The New Yorker. And “globally, the jihadist threat has never been greater.”

As the Iraqi government moved to strengthen its defenses Sunday, the Islamic militant group that captured two major cities last week posted graphic photos that appeared to show its fighters executing dozens of Iraqi soldiers.

Truthdig Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer and the other “Left, Right & Center” panelists discuss House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s unexpected loss to a tea party challenger. The National Review’s Rich Lowry calls it “one of the most stunning upsets any of us have ever witnessed.” Scheer says the defeat is “a response to pain” in the region. And what should the U.S. do as Sunni insurgents advance in Iraq?

Gunmen killed an anti-terrorism policeman and his family in Baghdad on Saturday; kidnappers abducted eight policemen on a highway to Jordan and Syria; and attackers shot dead a Sunni cleric in the country’s Shiite-majority south.

Nearly 10 years to the day after the start of the Iraq War, some 19 car bombs and a shooting in the country’s capital left 57 people dead, almost 200 wounded and many more wondering whether they’ll ever feel safe again.

On Sunday morning, a suicide car bomber disguised as a policeman attacked the police headquarters in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, killing 36 people and wounding 105 in the blast, according to The New York Times.

Despite news of the Syrian government’s acceptance of a peace plan brought in by special envoy Kofi Annan a day before, by Wednesday it was clear that those headlines didn’t mean much in the way of actual progress in Syria.

A $750 million, 104-acre complex that employs 16,000 people might have been George W. Bush’s concept of an embassy, but the people who run the country that happens to surround America’s fortress in Baghdad aren’t thrilled and the State Department has decided to scale back. (more)

Those words above belong to Iraq’s acting minister of the interior, Adnan al-Asadi, who is quoted by The New York Times among other Iraqi officials reacting negatively to the State Department’s unmanned (and unauthorized) surveillance drones flying over Baghdad.

The Iraq War may be “over,” but the unfinished business from years of American occupation still lingers. And a particularly grim chapter from that time, reaching all the way back to 2005, was revisited Monday in the trial of Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who entered a guilty plea on dereliction of duty in association with the killing of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Haditha.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Baghdad on Thursday to preside over a ceremony in which the U.S. Forces-Iraq flag was retired, which means that America’s nine-year occupation of Iraq has ended—at least on paper.

Benjamin Franklin may be one of the most wanted men in Iraq right now, as the country’s officials threaten to take the Pentagon to court to recoup some $6.6 billion in cash airlifted from the U.S. in 2004 for the purpose of Iraqi reconstruction. (more)

For the scores of journalists and aid workers who poured into Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the terrible food in Baghdad’s hotels was a shock—greasy minced meat, mayonnaise-soaked vegetables and an obsession with Pepsi.

I first saw the massive spread of twinkling lights that is Los Angeles at night from the San Gabriel Mountains in the early 1990s while visiting from Philadelphia. It was stunningly beautiful and made me think of a phone interview that I’d heard on CNN a year earlier just after New Year’s during the Gulf War.

How video games are changing the economy, the story behind the mythological toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, and the merits of being grossed out. These discoveries and more after the jump.

The U.S. troops that remain in Iraq after last summer’s withdrawal face some new challenges from within Iraqi factions, as some previously American-allied members of the Awakening Councils are apparently joining the ranks ... (continued)

American soldiers reportedly were called in to help Iraqi forces repel an attack by insurgents on an army base in Baghdad, just five days after the much-ballyhooed official end of U.S. combat operations in the country.

Iraq is now “sovereign and independent,” according to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who made this optimistic pronouncement on Tuesday, the official end day of the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from his war-ravaged country.

American combat forces might be exiting Iraq, but a wave of deadly violence around the country Wednesday served as a grim reminder that war is likely to be a daily reality for Iraqis for a long time to come.

The term withdrawal seems a bit overstated when it comes to describing the changing U.S. military strategy in Iraq, but President Obama emphasized the thematic over the technical in a speech he delivered Monday ... (continued)

He’s been hailed as a hero for allegedly publicizing classified video of a 2007 U.S. helicopter attack that killed 12 civilians in Iraq, but now Pfc. Bradley E. Manning is catching heat from the military for the WikiLeaks exposé.

The vice president is spending his Independence Day in Iraq. Speaking from what he described as Saddam Hussein’s hunting lodge, Biden celebrated the toppling of the former Iraqi ruler, saying, “I find it delicious that that’s happened.”

Even though Barack Obama writes that America cannot allow the burdens of the 21st century to “fall on American shoulders alone,” he similarly cannot accept that the United States deviate from the globalist ambitions emphasized in the published strategies of both the Bush and Obama administrations.